No problem, you ask questions and I'll answer but, I've written huge amounts of stuff on my site so if I've already written a comprehensive answer to your question, I'll point you to it.

BTW Many people want to know the complicated stuff so it had to be included but I've deliberately kept it in science panels to make the main body of the text easier to understand. If you ignore those for now and go back to them later, if you wish (or dare!), you will probably grasp the basic details more easily.

Tesco Low Dust Cat Litter 10l pack for £3.75 does one basket - make sure you rinse the hell out of it though, the pink stuff is harmless but it'll make your pond water look like some horrible crime has been committed in it!

API laterite is like rocking horse $4it to get hold of and when I was looking I couldn't find anywhere that supplied it in this country. Fortunately there's a product which does the same job called "JBL Aquabasis plus". You can get a 5l bag off Amazon for something in the region of £15 - 1 bag makes up about 10 baskets.

I'm not sure if this will help with the planning - I might have completely the wrong idea about how your pond is going to look from your picture - but on first look I thought this could work with a bit of tinkering....

Thanks for your help. I've read Kevin's CD book and am better clued up now although a little confused when he states the filter baskets should be in a separate tank not in the pond. That way the mulm can be periodically cleaned out from the bottom of the tank whereas it would simply build up in the pond. I see the sense in this and may be able to build a raised chamber of 10 baskets at the left end and waterfall it into the pond. Does this mean that it is not a good idea to have planted biocensis baskets in the pond at all?

Thanks for the input. The chamber on the right was going to be gravity fed to a vortex or aquapod as a pre filter. The return was going along far bank into a filter chamber at the left end where the planks are.

I'll have to build a block wall at that point raise the chamber slightly and have it waterfall into the main pond. The chamber should hold about 12 baskets.

The pipe in the bottom right is the roof water drain pipe from the house (broken twice in the pond build!)

Does this make sense?

I had thought of using the aquapod chamber as a gravity fed biocensis filter but couldn't figure out where to put the pre filter. Not sure whether the aquapod or vortex would work as a pre filter with the medium removed?

Narwhal wrote:.......Does this mean that it is not a good idea to have planted biocensis baskets in the pond at all?

In my ideal pond I'd have them exactly as described in Kevin's book and Mankey's articles, but my pond had already been built when I first stumbled upon the anoxic filter system (AFS) principles and, like you, I didn't have a space I could put the baskets except in the pond itself. I've since built a separate 240 galllon tank where my 20 odd (unplanted) baskets normally reside but this also doubles as my quarantine tank if/when the need arises (I can isolate it from the main pond as required) and in that event the baskets would go straight back into the main pond for the duration.

I didn't plant my main baskets up because I knew they were going to eventually reside in the tank inside my garage (no sunlight in there) but I've used the same cat litter/aquabasis+ mix in a couple of smaller baskets that I put in my "veggie" filter stream that gets fed from the skimmer - these aren't completely submerged as the stream isn't deep enough - but the plants in there absolutely love it and went mad in the summer! If you have to put the baskets in the main pond there's no reason why you shouldn't plant them up - they'll work better if you do - just be aware that if you intend to keep koi they like to ferret around in there and delicate aquatic plants might not tolerate the robust nature of a koi's interest. Ideally though, if you can adapt your pond design to keep the baskets separate from the fish that's the way you should go imho.